The camera viewfinder of a video journalist shows South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Midrand, South Africa June 2, 2024.
© picture alliance / REUTERS | Ihsaan Haffejee
USAID cuts have hit Africa’s media hard, worsening working conditions for journalists already struggling with low pay, harassment, and political repression while Western, Chinese, and Russian power struggles over truth and discourse increasingly affect the future of Africa’s media landscape.
The camera viewfinder of a video journalist shows South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Midrand, South Africa June 2, 2024.
© picture alliance / REUTERS | Ihsaan Haffejee
President Donald Trump’s freezing of U.S. foreign aid to Africa has undoubtedly exposed the extent to which the continent depends on U.S. government funding to run some of its most important programmes in health, governance, and trade, among others. One sector that is likely to bear the brunt of the aid freeze is the media, which is donor-funded in several countries.
USAID has assisted media development in Africa in crucial areas such as journalism training, investigative journalism as well as support for independent media to promote democracy and a free media. For example, according to Beauregard Tromp, convenor of the African Investigative Journalism Conference, a total of USD 28 million for the promotion of investigative journalism in Southern, East, and West Africa has been frozen. In Uganda, it is believed that two of its biggest journalism and media development organisations lost funding worth at least USD 2 million between them. These are not large sums, but they are substantial in the context of African media landscapes – especially those that rely on donor funding.
African journalists face significant challenges, including poor remuneration and working conditions, harassment, and physical threats. “A reduction in U.S. support will worsen these conditions, making it harder for journalists to operate safely and independently”, observes Gerald Businge, a Ugandan multimedia trainer, consultant, and Team Leader at Ultimate Multimedia Consult.
Uganda Radio Network (URN) is Uganda’s homegrown news agency that provides locally sourced news content to 120 local media houses, using funds mainly from local partners, such as the governance program, and Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) and USAID, as well as regional partners such as Twaweza. Two years ago, it started fundraising through the non-profit site, GlobalGiving, after the Uganda government suspended the DGF in 2021, which was one of its key partners. At the time of writing, URN had collected a mere EUR 3,019 out of the required EUR 92,448. Therefore, the US aid freeze could not have come at a worse time. It is commendable that URN has sought alternative funding through an approach that might provide some relief from stringent corporate donor terms and conditions. However, fundraising is quite unpredictable, making it difficult to plan.
Organisations like URN have had to lay off staff and reduce content production after these financial cuts. This means that the 120 media houses that rely on URN for news have lost a critical source of professionally sourced daily news, argues Wilson Akiiki Kaija, a journalist and lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University. This is likely to further reduce the availability of locally sourced and produced news that caters to the Ugandan audience and local media needs, especially in the absence of a credible public broadcaster, as is the case in most parts of Africa. Moreover, most Ugandan radio stations cannot afford to recruit in-house journalists and must therefore rely on subscriptions from URN for their news bulletins. Needless to say, organisations like URN are critical to amplifying grassroot voices while providing accurate news and combating mis- and disinformation.
Foreign support for local media has not always been without controversy. Although there appears to be a lack of empirical evidence to suggest that USAID funding compromised editorial independence, several commentors do not rule it out. For example, Ahmad Abuhamad, writing about the independence of Western-funded media outlets in the Arab world, asks the question: If Western funding is ultimately governmental and controlled by official decisions and institutions, and if accessing this funding comes with conditions that potentially affect the editorial standards of journalistic content, then what does the term "independence" truly signify in this context? He observes that most of these media projects reported social issues from "a Western perspective, which did not align with the broader social contexts in the regions where these Western-funded media institutions operate." Similar questions can be raised with respect to the African continent.
The recent U.S. policy change may also open the door widely for its systemic rivals to intensify their engagement with African media. A geopolitical shift is already underway in Africa – not with soldiers, but through microphones, cameras, and servers. China, Russia, and India have been strategically investing in sub-Saharan Africa’s media landscape for some time now – quietly reshaping the field of international media development and increasingly challenging Western influence.
The media-related influence of major BRICS actors China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates in Africa has been severely understudied, even though it is fundamentally transforming the conditions for independent journalism. Unlike Western actors such as Germany or the Nordic countries – who primarily offer training and capacity-building – BRICS nations often deliver tangible assets: newsroom equipment, mobile networks, and free content from state-run news agencies like Xinhua. For many resource-strapped newsrooms, these offerings are hard to resist – and represent a subtle form of geopolitical soft power.
This trend is unfolding in a context where media freedom is already under pressure. With very few exceptions, most sub-Saharan nations struggle with fragile democratic institutions. Over 20 countries in the region are classified as fragile states by the World Bank. In such environments, journalistic ideals often take a backseat – especially when BRICS content is freely available, while Western support comes tied to abstract norms and slower-moving programmes.
One striking example is in Ghana and Rwanda where coverage of migration is increasingly framed through a Chinese lens due to Xinhua’s provision of local-language news content. Media experts in these countries informally describe how Chinese-sponsored news depict European policy towards African migrants as hostile towards African migrants. In 2024, Russia launched its own journalism training centre in Namibia – the “RT Academy.”
While Western donors typically promote a pluralistic media landscape as a vehicle for democratisation and development, BRICS countries pursue more pragmatic – and often authoritarian – strategies. They export their own models of journalism which frequently lack the investigative edge and are less geared towards supporting press freedom – aspects associated with Western ideals.
What is more, African journalists are increasingly faced with a choice – not just a normative one, but often as a matter of survival. Low pay, political repression, and poor working conditions create what South African journalist Dugmore calls “precarious professionalism.” In many cases, journalists must adapt their work to realities that conflict with their professional ideals.
To address the research gap and explore how journalistic practices and values are affected by these new geopolitical players, the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism at TU Dortmund has started an initiative involving partner universities in seven African countries. The pilot project aims not only to describe, but also to measure these developments. Using interviews, local-language desk research, and experimental methods, researchers will compare the media environments in Uganda (with strong Western donor presence) and Tanzania (with significant Chinese influence).
A key innovation of the project is its interdisciplinary approach, combining communication science with economic theory with an intercultural perspective. The researchers aim to understand how media actors in the Global South make decisions, such as whether to accept an offer from Beijing or Berlin, and what motivates them.
Another crucial objective is to centre African researchers in the process and challenge the traditionally Western-centric perspective in this field of study. Too often, research has been done about Africa, not with Africa.
Be that as it may, public opinion, at least as expressed in sections of Uganda’s legacy and social media, seems to suggest that it is high time Africa cleaned up her house and stopped depending on the U.S. and other foreign funders for almost everything. This should include the media. In a commentary published in Uganda’s Daily Monitor, Ifeanyi M. Nsofor ponders how Africa should respond to aid cuts, given that foreign aid is naturally unreliable. His answer: “The current financial crisis, then, should serve as a wake-up call, for Africa to re-strategize and develop home-grown financing solutions for sectors such as health.” In another commentary published in the same publication, Jonas Mbabazi Musinga suggests that Africa should diversify trade partnerships, “such as tapping into China’s tariff-free offers to 33 African countries,” to reduce overdependence on U.S. government assistance. These two opinions, among many, seem to contradict pro-Western thinking which does not favour collaboration with China.
Nonetheless, one wonders what home-grown financing solutions for the media in Africa would look like. Given the fragile state of democracy in many countries, is it really in the best interest of governments to create an environment in which the media thrive within their own capabilities? At a continental level, perhaps it is time for the Pan-African News Agency to play a more prominent role in promoting values such as democracy and good governance while promoting Africa’s integration. Certainly, it is time to rethink the concept of donor-funded journalism and instead aim for truly independent and professional media sectors in Africa. To paraphrase the words of Beauregard Tromp, it is possible for the media sector in Africa to weather the storm and aim for excellence that rivals the quality of well-resourced projects in the West. Simon Allison of The Continent, a South African independent publication suggests achieving this by “Growing local philanthropy, working harder at convincing advertisers that it is important to keep their business with independent media houses and to give them the moral case to do so.”
Dr. Sara Namusoga-Kaale is a lecturer at Makerere University in the Department of Journalism and Communication and currently as Humboldt Fellow at the Erich Brost Institute. Her research focus is European media coverage of African migrants and communication practices of African migrants in Europe.
Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler is Professor for International Journalism and Managing Director of the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism at University of Dortmund.
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